Choosing Day
by whovianallover
Summary: Synopsis: When she sees him for the first time, it is at the Choosing Ceremony. He stands five people away from her and she can't stop staring. Sherlolly Divergent AU.


_**A/N This one still seems a bit jumpy to me. idk. Set five years previous to "Divergent", so Marcus is still the leader of the Ceremony, but it isn't Tris' year. Sorry about the present tense. Just trying it out. :) 30/6 **_

_**Divergent and Sherlock aren't mine. They belong to their respective owners. I make no material profit from this work.**_

Synopsis: When she sees him for the first time, it is at the Choosing Ceremony. He stands five people away from her and she can't stop staring. Sherlolly Divergent AU.

**Choosing** **Day.**

When she sees him for the first time, it is at the Choosing Ceremony. He stands five people away from her in the large circle the initiates make around the hall. Molly Hooper can't stop staring at him. She reprimands herself and looks away. _Staring is self-indulgent._ The reality of today slams into her. As long as she doesn't bleed into the grey stones of the Abnegation bowl and commit her life to one of selflessness, she can stare all she likes. Molly raises her eyes slowly to his. He is the sort of interesting that makes her want to talk to him, no matter that she won't ever see him again. No matter that they might be completely different doesn't know whether it's his defined cheekbones, his stunning eyes, the way Dauntless gear seems to just _cling _to him or something else- something _deeper_ but she can't look away.

Half of Molly wants to keep staring, to embed his face into her memories forever and the other half, her dominant, intellectual half, knows that all of this is fruitless and she should just look away and forget him. Molly is about to do just that when he looks back at her. He looks in her eyes and he is reading her; soaking in her story. His eyes, a fractured blue-green, rake over her. She raises an eyebrow and smiles. She is pleasantly surprised when he smiles back.

Molly must choose before the boy. She hears her name ring out. _Molly Hooper._ Molly steals one last look at the mysterious boy and shares a tight smile with her mother; a petite woman clad in the grey clothes of her faction. Molly closes her eyes briefly as she thinks of her father, resting his soul in Heaven. She takes a step, and another, and another and soon she is taking the knife from Marcus Eaton; the knife she would use to express her choice of faction.

Molly swallows hard. She knows what faction she is going to choose. Her mother seemed to know long before she had herself; there is no reason to hesitate now. Molly drags the knife along the pale skin of her palm and her blood falls into the bloodstained water of Erudite. She has chosen. Molly doesn't remember crossing the room to stand behind the Erudite seats, but she is there and she is watching the next five people Choose. A Dauntless-born chooses Amity. An Amity girl returns to her faction. An Erudite boy chooses Dauntless and so on. The names and factions blur together in Molly's mind until the name of the boy from earlier is called. SherlockHolmes_. _'_My_,' Molly thinks, '_even his name is interesting.'_

Sherlock paces slowly but confidently to Marcus. His left hand is shaking, but he balls it into a fist by his side to hide it, like he had always hidden it. It is a weakness. Sherlock doesn't even glance at his parents sitting in the seats on the opposite side of the room. He won't see them again; they are too proud to make an appearance on Visiting Day. Sherlock flexes his hands and relaxes them as he strides the few steps left to Marcus with purpose. The hilt of the knife Marcus hands him is cold, it bites into his skin as he grips it.

Molly notices Sherlock chews his lower lip in concentration as he draws the knife across his palm. Everybody watches his red blood rise to the surface of his skin as he steps closer to the five bowls and chooses his new faction.

He is Erudite.

Molly forces herself not to let her smile dominate her face. She needs to be nonchalant; she barely knows him. Despite this, Molly can't help feeling Sherlock Holmes is one of her only friends in her new faction. Sherlock is standing next to her, facing the center of the circular room. Molly finds herself trying not to think about the tingles that sweep up her arm from their close proximity. She turns her mind somewhere else by tuning back into the Ceremony. Molly looks around the room for people she knows and their new factions. _Sally Donovan; Dauntless. Sebastian Moran; Erudite. James Moriarty; Erudite _Molly feels Sherlock tense up beside her when John Watson chooses. _Dauntless. _Molly notices Sherlock's hand twitch in her peripheral vision.

The last person to Choose chooses Candor. The Choosing Ceremony is over and it is time for the initiates to leave for their respective compounds. The silence of the occupants of the hall seems to magnify even with the shuffling of feet to cover it up. As the new Erudite initiates began to walk out, Molly cranes her head to find one last look at her mother. Kathleen Hooper is smiling, despite losing her only child to another faction, and Molly exhales the worried breath she had been holding. Her mother will be happy. Her personality, built for Abngegation, will allow her to carry on, forgetting her sorrow in her plight to assist others.

Molly doesn't realise she is crying until she hits open air and notes that the grass beneath her feet is a blur of green and brown. Molly wipes her face hastily with the heel of her hand. The Erudite initiates surrounding her, all broken into groups of three and four, are talking to each other excitedly. Molly becomes suddenly aware that she isn't talking to anyone and whips her head around, searching for the boy, Sherlock Holmes. She spots him, finally, a few paces in front of her to her right. He is hunched forward, hands in pockets and Molly starts toward him.

Molly sidles up next to Sherlock, and he looks back at her. "Hi." she begins, unsure. _He_ _won_'_t reject me now, _Molly thinks, _Or was I imagining everything that happened in the Hall?_ He slows down his pace so she won't have to jog to keep up with his long legs. Molly counts a half minute before he responds.

"Hi."

_**A**_**/**_**N Ahh! I did it; I finished my first AU! Please don't kill me for the factions I put everyone in. I have a headcanon that Sherlock was abused as a kid (that I only discovered I had in the process of writing this) but I decided to omit it because I thought it would be too similar to Tobias' story. Tell me what you think? -Rose**_


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